


After Life

by dusty_cookie (dusty_curtain)



Category: The Walking Dead (Comics), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 19:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13958691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dusty_curtain/pseuds/dusty_cookie
Summary: Life goes on. And sometimes, so does death.





	After Life

“I’ll pick you up Friday night. 7 pm. Wear your dancing shoes!”

A grin, a wink and no room to argue. That was how it had started. 

Lucille had asked herself many times over the years if she should have told him to get lost. If maybe both their lives would have been different. Better. 

As it was, that Friday night she waited for him, despite her obnoxious inner voice telling her over and over again that, surely, she would be the victim of some cruel joke. But despite being popular and an athlete and oh so handsome from her perspective, Negan had never been mean to her before. 

And so, she attempted to tame her unruly curls, put on some makeup, hoping that it would hide the furious blush that she always wore whenever he was around, put on the yellow sundress he had complimented her on once and tore through her closet in search for something that could pass as “dancing shoes”.

And she waited and he picked her up and she expected him to laugh at her any minute now. To let her stand there on her porch, while his basketball team appeared from behind cars and bushes, pointing at her. Then during the car ride, she expected him to stop halfway through. To tell her she was too boring and plain after all. At the country fair, she was so self-conscious at first. She feared that he would find her humor too crude, despite him being much worse than her. She expected him to leave her standing there, cotton candy in hand, telling her that a girl shouldn’t use such words.

But he stayed.

When the whispers started in the school hallways, about the captain of the basketball team dating the resident bookworm, Lucille was sure that he would tell her that this had been a terrible fucking idea. She knew she would miss the kisses most. Negan was a surprisingly good kisser.

But he stayed.

When they snuck around her parents that one afternoon to finally have some time alone, she was so nervous. She felt awkward and ashamed of her belly and of her blotchy skin and of her lack of experience. He told her how beautiful she was, over and over again, until she almost believed him. It hurt and he kissed the pain away, moving agonizingly slow inside of her. All she could do was lie there and stare in wonder at him while he clenched his eyes shut and moaned above her. Afterwards she feared that he would leave. That he would tell that she was no fun in bed.

But he stayed.

Lucille gave her valedictorian speech at their high school graduation ceremony and he looked so proud, sitting among his team mates, the cap way too small on his giant head. 

He proposed that very night after the party.

Her parents tried everything to convince her not to marry him. She was smart and successful and too young and such a good girl and he was big and dumb and known for being too foul mouthed and too flirty with the ladies.

His mom had hated her from the start. She told Negan that Lucille and her family thought they were better than him. That he should find a nice girl from church.

But he stayed.

They eloped and found a small apartment together and Negan and Lucille were happy. 

She trained to be a nurse and he went to college on a full scholarship, on his way to become a professional basketball player. A knee injury put those aspirations to rest and Negan was so depressed for a while, Lucille thought that their marriage was over before it had even properly started.

But he stayed.

After a couple of days of moping, Negan pulled himself together, declared that he would become a teacher “to show those little shits how it’s fucking done” and told her to hurry the fuck up with her job training, since they would need the money. They both worked hard, dreaming of a small house with a small garden and a small dog. All of it would be perfect for them and their children. Their little family. 

Month after month after month they hoped and prayed and then cried, until the doctors told them that there would be no children. No little family. 

Lucille felt so numb. Negan tried everything he could to make her feel better. 

“We have each other. That’s e-fucking-nough for me, Lu.”

“You should just leave me, Negan. Find a woman that can give you a family.”

“You are my family, Lucille. I don’t want anyone else.”

“For now…”

But he stayed.

The infertility turned out to be a hit to their marriage they wouldn’t recover from, despite Negan’s best attempts to make it all better. Lucille knew she shouldn’t withdraw from him like that. That she should talk to him. But Negan had always been the talker in their relationship and these days he appeared to be at a loss for words more and more often.

It would be a couple of years until the late training sessions and emergency staff meetings started. Lucille wasn’t stupid. She was just indifferent. There were attempts now and then, usually from his side. A nice vacation, spent mostly apart. A couple of half-hearted hours of marriage counseling. Lucille appreciated these efforts, she really did. But they never truly worked and she told him over and over again to just go and live with whatever ditzy new colleague he was fucking over his office desk that year.

But he stayed.

And when the headaches started, he stayed. And when the surgeries left her unable to move for weeks at a time, he stayed. And when the doctors told them that the tumors had come back and spread to her lymph nodes, he stayed. 

He stayed when her hair, the hair that he had loved so much, was gone. He stayed when she spent hours hunched over an old salad bowl, throwing up nothing but bile and then blood. He stayed, even when he couldn’t take care of her at home anymore. He stayed when they had to put tubes down her throat and when she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. And he kept talking and for the first time in years, she listened. 

And when the warmth came, draping itself all over her body like a blanket, and when she felt a gentle tug at the edge of her consciousness, Lucille had an epiphany that only someone dying could have. He had done it all for her. 

The tugging became stronger while her heartbeat became weaker. She knew it was time.

But she stayed.

There was another pull, more violent this time and her body started acting on its own. A hunger deep in her belly, a raspy growl in her throat, hands trying to grab, but not quite reaching, the blurry outline of something, someone, familiar right in front of her. It was replaced by a different outline and her hunger became almost painful, her entire being filled with the desire to sink her teeth into soft flesh, tearing it apart.

Something red and heavy came down on her and the hunger was gone. She was gone, too, in a way, the only thing remaining a dull worry about Negan. She knew it shouldn’t be like this. She knew this was all wrong. She shouldn’t be here, she should be long gone by now.

But she stayed.

For a while it was just her. Disembodied. Flitting in and out of Negan’s thoughts. Maybe this was it. Maybe we stay with the people we love, making a home in their hearts and their minds.

Lucille was confused when he chose the baseball bat. Negan had never been a baseball player. But things change, now more than ever and it was so satisfying to watch him swing his strong arms over some rotten head, coating the smooth wood in blood and brains. She couldn’t get enough of him using it, being so attentive, the way he carefully cleaned her afterwards.

When that asshole pushed him into the barbed wire, she was furious. She wanted to protect Negan, wanted to see that man suffer, to have his blood all over her, too. Negan did exactly what Lucille wanted. He was shocked, afterwards, of his own actions. Of her thirst. For one brief moment, she felt his doubt and his fear and she half expected him to throw her into the fire.

But she stayed.

And he gave her a pretty new dress. They found a home and a family and they did what they had done when they were younger. He talked to her and she listened attentively. She didn’t even mind the girls that kept him warm at night. It was her he loved. Her advice he took.

The second man took much longer to kill and when Lucille and Negan were done she felt giddy and pretty with that man’s brain and hair clinging to her.

When she was shot, she and Negan were both speechless for a moment until the fury took over again. He cradled her in his arms and later that night he touched her wound and spoke softly to her, telling her how happy he was that she was still with him and that he would take better care of her from now on and how sorry he was.

Lucille knew Negan wouldn’t die after that man cut his throat. One perk of the afterlife was that you had a much better understanding of death and she knew it wasn’t his time yet. But they were seperated and all she had for years was darkness and the voice of a traitor and she missed Negan every day. It made her weak.

Their reunion was bittersweet. She felt a happiness in him that she hadn’t thought possible. But her body was old and brittle and so was her soul after years of fighting. Lucille was tired. She almost hoped to finally be free when everything splintered around her and Negan’s scream filled the air.

But she stayed.

She couldn’t leave him. He needed her. He had no one. The man that almost killed him still hated him. The child that used to talk to him avoided him. His former family looked at him with fear in their eyes. No one wanted him. So when he left them all behind, she went with him. 

She told herself that they were happy. He had to be happy. He talked to her all the time. He even planted beautiful flowers for her. But was it for her? Or was it for who she used to be? Before she got sick. 

For the second time in their life together, Lucille felt like the spark between them was gone. She desperately tried to cling to him, to sink her claws into his thoughts. To remind him of their time together, how she had protected him.

She was ecstatic when he finally found a new body for her. And there he was, looking for a shiny new dress, too.

His hands on her wood feel wonderful as he dresses her, murmuring loving words to her. She feels the woman’s presence before he does and she tries to warn him, to call out to him, but he doesn’t hear her anymore.

Lucille feels him slipping away from her. She feels his loneliness and his despair and his confusion. He still loves her. And she finally understands.

All these years, she had always expected him to leave.

But he had stayed.

He hadn’t been strong enough. And she feels him calling out to her now, even if he can’t feel it himself. She knows that it is time. 

Time to let him go.

As the flames lick at her almost lovingly, Lucille feels the familiar warmth and this time, it is forever. 

  
  
  



End file.
